Watch Dogs announced by Ubisoft

Ubisoft treated us to this cryptic trailer for the upcoming title Watch Dogs, which introduces us to a terrifying near future world of complete private corporate information control. While this certainly paints an intriguing picture, nothing from the show has blown my mind quite as efficiently as the 10 minute gameplay footage released shortly after.

The game is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and the details released so far make up a very interesting concept:

Development of Watch Dogs is being led by Ubisoft Montreal, with a team comprised of industry veterans from blockbuster franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow 6 and Far Cry. Watch Dogs blends cutting-edge technologies and sophisticated game design into a realistic and living open world where players must use any means at their disposal to take down a corrupt system.

In Watch Dogs, players enter the dangerous world of Aiden Pearce, a new class of antihero whose ability to hack into any connected system could be his most powerful weapon. Whether it’s triggering a 30-car pileup by manipulating traffic-lights to trap an enemy during a downtown shootout or tapping into the city’s omnipresent security cameras to access anyone’s personal information, Pearce is capable of coercing and controlling almost every element of the world around him.

Jonathan Morin, creative director at Ubisoft had this to say:

Watch Dogs goes beyond the limits of today’s open-world games by giving players the ability to control an entire city. In Watch Dogs, anything connected to the city’s Central Operating System becomes a weapon. By pushing the boundaries, we can provide players with action and access to information on a scale that’s never been seen in a video game before.

If the final product delivers on the promises made during this announcement, this could be the next evolution of open-world games, and dethrone Rockstar as kings of the genre.